I don’t know what comes next. No one does. But Europe needs a deep-rethink of a lot more than just defense if it wants to have any say in what the next world order is going to look like. Otherwise, we’re looking at four decades of less peace and less prosperity.
Whether intentionally or not, the USA is relinquishing its role as global hegemon, and at least the baltics and nordics are contemplating the ramifications.
What they are doing now is saying might makes right, marking and end of the reign of the liberal democracy.
I wonder if the “have your cake and eat it too” dissonant thinking you’re hitting on is actually maybe easier found in the USA, and sort of on the other side of the spectrum. Plenty of folks voted explicitly for Trump because of his inward-focused, isolationist agenda. What they don’t realize is the extent to which the prosperity that they’ve seen up this point was dependent upon the rules-based order that their chosen leader is actively dismantling.
haha. Oh really? Because historically its always been violence.
People have been critical of the US when their admin lied about weapons of mass destruction, did massive amounts of drone strikes on civilians and put people in a concentration camp. "World police" is just a polemic description of that, it's not the content of the criticism.
Now there's country that traded nuclear weapons for protection by the US that is being invaded by a fascist dictator. Meanwhile the US admin is gaslighting everyone and lying about these basic facts and tried to humiliate and personally attack their president in public.
Are you talking about the Budapest Memorandum? According to Wikipedia, it says
>Seek immediate Security Council action to provide assistance to the signatory if they "should become a victim of an act of aggression or an object of a threat of aggression in which nuclear weapons are used".
So AIUI, that's a guarantee that the US will defend Ukraine if Ukraine gets attacked by Russia with nukes. It's not a guarantee that the US will defend Ukraine if Ukraine gets attacked by Russia with non-nukes. So I don't think the US has violated the agreement. Russia violated the agreement by attacking Ukraine (Russia was a signatory, and the treaty also says the parties won't attack each other with any type of weapon).
But had Ukraine not agreed, they very likely wouldn't have been invaded. Meanwhile Putin was threatening to use nuclear weapons if western countries would have directly intervened. This threat is looming over _all_ negotiations and actions.
So really Russia is getting away with invading Ukraine and expanding their territory and use their nuclear arsenal indirectly to achieve that.
In this context, “new Yalta” is more in reference to the carving up of “spheres of influence” by the big players, without the little players (the ones being carved up) having a seat at the table.
The right in ascendancy treats Yalta like a movement by the Roosevelt left to give Stalin concessions in a New World Order. That’s the phrase they want promoted. In particular, the UN and adjacent developments stem from a small number of great men. So, the right is happy about a new Yalta between Musk, Trump, and Putin.
Or is it Putin, Trump and Xi? That’s how I see it: Trump has hinted that the Panama Canal and Greenland are for sale. So the left way of looking at a New Yalta reflect multipolar colonial ambitions.
For a short period after the collapse of the USSR, the world used to have only one superpower (which was the US), but it's not the situation anymore.
> The world was working just fine
I guess you missed the rise of Chinese GDP from 3% to 20% of global GDP, their military buildup, and their advances on the neighbors and the sea.
Take a look at U.S. shipbuilding capacity, U.S. military equipment maintenance, and the defense industrial base that is maintaining the _appearance_ of the powerful status quo. This isn't unique to the U.S., the same is happening in Russia.
Turns out it costs a _lot_ of money to keep this charade up for everyone.
What an incredible take.
I cannot possibly think of a US intervention that went well for the receiving end.
Germany, Japan and the post WW2 order in question are probably the best candidates.
And don't forget Ukraine gave up nukes for security assurances from USA, UK and rusia.
As we can see now, it was a mistake. Declaration means little
This might genuinely be the birth of a true unipolar world order.
No idea if that's good or bad...
They view US as weak now, and will not stop until it is collapses on itself.
China owns an increasing majority of global GDP and Trump seems to be either taking a path of peace, populism and or stupidity by pulling America out of its global alliances.
The US performs a two-fold security function in Europe: first, it protects Europe from extra-European threats. Second, it protects Europe from intra-European threats. If however the US exits Europe, both kinds of threats become a reality overnight. When you think of what Europe is going to do if faced with any of these situations, it becomes very clear that China has absolutely nothing to offer on either front.
That is laughably tiny in the grand scheme of things.